(Phys.org)—A team of researchers with the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology in Japan has discovered the existence of a microbe that is able to convert organic compounds released from coal ...

Some of the bacteria in our guts were passed down over millions of years, since before we were human, suggesting that evolution plays a larger role than previously known in people's intestinal-microbe makeup, according to ...

(Phys.org)—A team of researchers from Germany and Switzerland has found examples of microbial life from over 3 billion years ago, that appeared to have evaded UV radiation by hiding in subsurface cavities. In their paper ...

When the algal ancestor of modern land plants first succeeded in making the transition from aquatic environments to an inhospitable shore 450 million years ago, it changed the world by dramatically altering climate and setting ...

(Phys.org)—A pair of physicists, one with Tsinghua University in China, the other with Perdue University in the U.S. has come up with what they believe is a viable way to cause a living organism to be in two places at the ...

(Phys.org)—A small team of researchers working in Greenland has found that as microbes become active in permafrost, they produce heat, which can increase the rate of permafrost loss. In their paper published in Nature Climate ...

(Phys.org) —A study published today in Science by researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory may dramatically shift our understanding of the complex dance of microbes and minerals that ...

Like humans, many animals depend on beneficial microbes for survival. Although such symbioses can persist for millions of years, the factors maintaining their long-term stability remain, in most cases, unknown. Scientists ...

The idea that people make calculated decisions that allow them to obtain the most goods with the smallest amount of effort—a complex hypothesis called 'economic man' for short—often has been challenged. People sometimes ...

Microorganism

A microorganism (from the Greek: μικρός, mikrós, "small" and ὀργανισμός, organismós, "organism"; also spelled micro organism or micro-organism) or microbe is an organism that is microscopic (usually too small to be seen by the naked human eye). The study of microorganisms is called microbiology, a subject that began with Anton van Leeuwenhoek's discovery of microorganisms in 1675, using a microscope of his own design.

Microorganisms are very diverse; they include bacteria, fungi, archaea, and protists; microscopic plants (called green algae); and animals such as plankton, the planarian and the amoeba. Some microbiologists also include viruses, but others consider these as non-living. Most microorganisms are unicellular (single-celled), but this is not universal, since some multicellular organisms are microscopic, while some unicellular protists and bacteria, like Thiomargarita namibiensis, are macroscopic and visible to the naked eye.

Microorganisms live in all parts of the biosphere where there is liquid water, including soil, hot springs, on the ocean floor, high in the atmosphere and deep inside rocks within the Earth's crust. Microorganisms are critical to nutrient recycling in ecosystems as they act as decomposers. As some microorganisms can fix nitrogen, they are a vital part of the nitrogen cycle, and recent studies indicate that airborne microbes may play a role in precipitation and weather.

Microbes are also exploited by people in biotechnology, both in traditional food and beverage preparation, and in modern technologies based on genetic engineering. However, pathogenic microbes are harmful, since they invade and grow within other organisms, causing diseases that kill millions of people, other animals, and plants.